


Homecoming

by inamac



Series: All's Hair in Love and War [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark, F/M, Hair, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inamac/pseuds/inamac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Narcissa welcomes Lucius back from Azkaban. (Another response to the film version of the Malfoys.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

  
**HOMECOMING**   


 

 _1\. Narcissa_

She had not known whether to welcome or dread this day; the day her husband finally returned from Azkaban. She had known, from his letters and newspaper reports and the few visits she had been permitted in the long year of his incarceration, that the experience had changed him, but she had not anticipated, as she watched the half-dozen riders soar over the neatly clipped hedges of the Manor grounds to land on the gravel drive in front of the entrance to their home, that he would look so battered and weary.

So defeated.

She wanted, more than anything else, to take her husband and her son in her arms and apparate them away from all this. But there was nowhere in the Wizarding world safe from the Dark Lord's reach. They would all have to play the game out to its bitter end.

She threw back her shoulders, thinned her lips to the hard line of disapproval that her mother had schooled into her and walked slowly down the steps to greet her husband and her new guests.

"Narcissa!" He sounded anxious and exhausted. Which was no surprise. He would be as nervous as she about the price the Dark Lord might extract in return for his 'release' from the wizard's prison. A five-hour journey by broomstick across the length of Britain would have exhausted a fit young man. And Lucius was neither.

She embraced him with the formality of a hostess, rather than the warmth of a wife, feeling the tremble in his muscles, and the effort it took him to return the gesture in kind. It would not do, before others, to seem too relieved.

"Welcome home," she said, and turned to bestow a smile on the other Death Eaters who had accompanied him. "Welcome all. Come, there is food and rest prepared."

Mulciber and Jugson started forward with expressions of venal delight. Rodolphus looked briefly confused that his own wife had not come to greet him – well, he would find out soon enough how things stood with Bellatrix. With the Dark Lord. Narcissa linked her arm with her husband's and guided them both up the stairs and into the waiting house.

She tried to convince herself that he did not need her support.

She failed.

 _2\. Lucius_

This homecoming had not been the triumph he had dreamed of, or the resumption of status that he had anticipated. His house had been overrun by strangers. Familiar things were missing, or misplaced. The rooms seemed strange and cold, stripped of the wards that had protected the Malfoys alone for centuries, and replaced by hard, impersonal protective spells intended to kill or maim rather than repel and persuade. The atmosphere was not so very different from that of Azkaban. It smelled of fear.

Even here, in his own suite, the stain of travel washed away by the warmth of the bath, the hard drumming of the shower and the massage of thick towels, he could not relax.

There was one last ritual that might return him to himself. Pulling the silk of his house-robe around himself he returned to the dressing room and sat before his mirror. The silver reflected lines that had not been there the last time he had looked into this glass. He ignored it, reaching instead to open the cupboards and set out the bowl, water jug, shaving brush, combs and ebony-backed brushes all in their accustomed places.

His hair was clean now, but he realised, as he ran first the comb and then the brushes through the pale strands that it would be some time before the kinks of the plaits with which he had kept it free of some of the grime of that place would work out and return to the smooth elegance that reinforced his status in their world.

At last he set the brushes aside and turned the key on the drawer that held his razors.

He hesitated with his fingers on the catch of the box, remembering the last time he had felt the kiss of this steel, when Narcissa had gathered the fall of his hair into her hand and sliced it away, a memento for her, and a protection against the horrors that might be lurking in Azkaban.

Now though... He raised a hand to twist his fingers through the lank strands that had grown back all too swiftly, to scrape over the stubble on cheeks and jaw. For months his fingers had itched for the use of a wand to perform a grooming spell, or these razors, to make him feel human again.

He turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid, revealing the blades in their velvet lined bed. The faint tingle in his fingertips told him that the charm which kept them sharp was still in force. He let out a breath he had not realised he had been holding. His most intimate things, the gifts from his wife and son, were still inviolate.

He clicked open the five-inch blade and set it aside to pour water into the shaving bowl before taking the brush in his left hand and the bar of monogrammed hand-made soap in his right. Moving through the familiar ritual brought a calm that he had long thought lost. He watched the foam bloom onto the brush, the scent of soap and sandalwood filling his nostrils in the instant as he raised the laden brush to his face.

And then warm fingers closed around his wrist and he looked up into Narcissa's concerned blue eyes.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She glanced at the closed door, and then back to his face. "Everything," she breathed. "The Dark Lord thinks us defeated..."

He put down brush and soap and put his hand over hers. "Then we must show him that we are still loyal," he said. "When I take my place back at his side..."

He broke off as she shook her head. "It's too late, Lucius. You've not seen what he has become, this last year. He is obsessed. And if he wins this war, I do not think that he will reward his followers with anything other than death."

He bent his head and kissed the back of her hand where it still gripped his. "What would you have us do then? The Order would send us all to Azkaban, and I have no friends left in the Ministry. He is our only choice."

She stroked his hair with her free hand. "We can make our own choices," she said. "Let Him think us defeated, let Him believe that we have given him our lives with our house. The time will come when we can escape. Until then," she reached past him to pick up the razor, folding the blade back into the handle to return it gently to its place in the box, "when he looks at us, let him see that we are no threat, nothing more than a weak woman, a foolish boy and a beaten man."

She was clever, he had always acknowledged that. Father had expressed doubts about him taking a Slytherin wife, but she had already saved Draco, and she had had a year to observe the Dark Lord's plans. He sighed, clearly release from Azkaban had not meant a release from the horrors of this war. He reached out to close the lid of the box, to lock it and slide it back into the drawer before standing and turning to take her in his arms.

"Very well," he said, "I will play the role. But would the weak woman care to welcome the beaten man home properly?"

She smiled. "Of course. If the beaten man feels up to it?"

"Oh he does." Lucius allowed the robe to fall open and pressed himself against her in demonstration.

Her arms went round him, pulling him into her waiting heat, and she raised herself onto her toes to rub her smooth cheek against his unshaven one and whisper in his ear, "Oh yes. And this weak woman does like a bit of rough."

For the first time in a year the sound of laughter was heard in Malfoy Manor.

~FIN~


End file.
